The Google Diet: How to Use Google's Cafeteria Tricks to Lose Weight

Find out how Google made its employees healthier and how you can use those same diet tips to lose weight and make
healthier food choices at home.

Google is on a mission and it has nothing to do with searching the Web or social networking. This tech giant is dedicated
to helping its employees make better food choices. Not surprisingly, its philosophy is based on the latest behavioral
research (much of it out of Cornell University) that finds that if you gently steer people toward healthy eats, they’ll
naturally choose them. And Google has measured the results. “Removing all bad foods and only offering healthy foods may
sound like a good idea but it only alienates employees, causing backlash,” says David Just, Ph.D., an associate professor
of behavioral economics at Cornell University. “You’ll have much more success if you subtly nudge them in the right
direction instead.” Read on to see how Google set up its cafeterias to encourage healthy eating and how you can create
your own diet-friendly kitchen at home.

— Karen Ansel, M.S., R.D.

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1. Focus on Produce

Walk into any Google café and the very first thing you’ll see is the salad bar. Not only that, an inviting fruit bowl is
strategically located in the middle of the center island. “Visibility is extremely important,” says Just. “Whatever you
see first is what you’re likely to start thinking about.” In one short month, the number of Googlers munching on fresh
fruit climbed by two-thirds.

Do It at Home: Fill the center shelf of your fridge with loads of freshly cut veggies or
leave a stocked fruit bowl out on your counter.

2. Downsize Your Plate

Do It at Home: Swap oversized dinner plates for 7" salad plates

Research led by Brian Wansink of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab shows the bigger your dish, the more food you’re likely to
pile on it. That’s why Google offers an option of a standard-size plate or a slightly smaller one. Directly above the
plates hangs a sign with a gentle reminder that people who use larger plates tend to eat more. The result: a 32 percent
uptick in small-plate use.

3. Stick with Portions

While buffet-style is still the norm, Google is test-driving pre-plated meals that spell out the exact number of calories
in each dish. This move should have big benefits for waist-conscious workers. In a Diabetes, Obesity and
Metabolism study, researchers at the University of Illinois found that overweight men who ate a pre-packaged
low-calorie entree for lunch and dinner lost 45% more weight than a group who were instructed to eat the same amount of
calories, but prepared all of their own foods.

Do It at Home: Prepare a stash of healthy, pre-portioned, ready-to-go meals to have on
hand for instant portion control.

4. Limit Liquid Calories

Sure, soda and juice are still in café refrigerator cases, but if Googlers want them they’ll have to step off the food
line to get them. But, they’re unlikely to bother. Long before workers ever reach for a sweetened drink they’ll find vats
of filtered water conveniently positioned on café countertops right alongside the food. Simply placing bottled water on
an eye-level shelf in the fridge and bumping soda to a lower shelf boosted H2O intake by 47 percent.

Do It at Home: Not a fan of plain water? Keep a pitcher of water with a slice of lemon in
your fridge.

5. Hide the Sweets

At Google, sweets aren’t taboo but they are harder to find in the cafeteria. Not a bad move considering one study—also
led by Wansink—found people wolf down more than twice as many chocolates when they’re right in front of them compared to
when they’re farther away (6 feet) and covered. Candy, once housed in clear dispensers at eye level, used to be a serious
temptation. Not anymore. Now it’s tucked away in opaque containers, on a lowly bottom shelf, an about-face that cut candy
consumption by 9 percent in one week.

Do It at Home: Stash snacks like chips, cookies or cereal in a cabinet. People who do this
tend to weigh 15 to 20 pounds less than people who store snacks on their kitchen counters, says Just.